Nothing Doing

Despite a number of potential news catalysts, the market did very little today. We had the inability of the Europeans to make another deal regarding Greece, we had the crease-fire news in the Middle East, and we had news Tuesday that Ben Bernanke can't save us from the consequences of going over the fiscal cliff. Any of these events could have been an excuse for a market move, but instead it drifted a little higher in slow trading. Breadth was nicely positive, but volume was very light.

As I've mentioned before, the trading around Thanksgiving tends to have a positive bias, and we already had a little momentum from Monday's oversold bounce to build on. It is tough to anticipate that we will keep on running higher, especially as volume starts to slow, but the holiday spirit tends to favor the bulls.

We have a half day of trading on Friday and it is going to be very slow and random once again. The technical picture doesn't look great for more upside in the near term, but the fact that we are holding up and consolidating is a positive. Next week we'll have news flow to react to, and I'm a bit concerned that it may be negative. The fiscal cliff negotiation is not likely to be very easy and I'm anticipating that there will be fear that a deal may not be done. I'm confident the politicians will eventually come together but they are going to play hardball first.

I want to thank everyone for all the very kind comments about my Thanksgiving column. I appreciate it greatly. Have a great Thanksgiving, and I'll see you for Friday's abbreviated session.